How to RSVP to your son's wedding - by Bess Kalb
The Grudge Report
How to RSVP to your son's wedding
A guide!
May 22, 2026
Donald Trump Jr. is getting married this weekend and after publicly dithering for a few days, his father has announced he will not be attending. The following is a list that might be helpful to other parents who frequently take time off on the weekends. The following are direct quotes.
- YES: “Yes!”
- NO: “This is not good timing for me.”
- YES: “Son, I would not miss it for the world.”
- NO: “I have a thing called Iran and other things.”
- YES: “Since your mother is no longer with us, of course I will be there.”
- NO: “If I do attend, I get killed. If I don’t attend, I get killed by the fake news.”
- YES: “What an honor. Would you like me to officiate?”
- NO: “Hopefully they’re going to have a great marriage.”
- YES: “As your only living parent, nothing could stop me. I’ll be there straightening your tie and wishing you well.”
- NO: “While I very much wanted to be with my son…circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so.”
- YES: “Your wedding? Of course I’ll be there. And I’m sorry for allegedly slapping you in the face and knocking you to the ground in front of multiple eye witnesses in your dorm room at Penn all those years ago. My loathing for you is inherited. My father’s alcoholic rage is the defining trauma of my life, and my inability to meet his standards or please him created a pathological complex around amassing power. I’ve built myself monuments and surrounded myself only with people who abet my conquests or serve as trophies, and in stamping you with my name, you serve as a living reminder of my obsolescence. I am incapable of feeling affection toward you because your existence is a threat. I hated my father and I hate you as he hated me. This is not a family, this is a nuclear pain generator whose blast radius is the free world. So, no. I can’t attend your wedding because seeing you with your young, beautiful new wife is a painful reminder of my own loveless marriage, in which I, a decrepit old man vainly clawing to the appearance of virility, am so loathed by his own wife that she lives in another state. I can’t attend your wedding because I cannot bear witness to my own inferiority, a bystander to the triumph of the enemy I created. There is nothing I would rather do than anything else. Forgive me. May you one day, when you are on your third or fourth marriage and surrounded by sons who look at you with the same contempt, forgive me.”
- “I’ll try.”